With advances in integrated circuit, microprocessor, networking and communication technologies, an increasing number of devices, in particular, digital computing devices, are being interconnected. This increased interconnectivity of computing devices has laid the groundwork for a communication infrastructure particularly well suited for electronic communications between such computing devices. More specifically, the increased interconnectivity of computing devices coupled with the ease of use and immediacy afforded by electronic messaging has led to the widespread adoption of electronic messaging applications such as email.
In the past, electronic messaging was limited to the exchange of text-based email messages between a relatively small populace. Over time, however, electronic messaging applications and associated communications protocols have grown increasingly sophisticated enabling complex message formatting as well as the ability to distribute binary data with the messages to large numbers of recipients. Despite such advancements, however, email continues to be used merely as a means of communication between two or more end users.